Last weekend, I conquered a plumbing project.
For YEARS the sink in my bathroom has drained slowly. Years. Since we moved into the house. It started off just sluggish, but got progressively worse.
I can claim some of the responsibility for this since I have long hair, and the shedding cats can claim some part as well, since water from the faucet is indescribably delicious and is in fact almost the only place they would drink. Anybody's unguarded water glass will work as well. Naia taught this to Coco, and it continues to this day. A water dish? Pffft.
Anyway, slow drain. I've tried vinegar and baking soda, boiling water, bleach, plunging, and even resorted to using dangerous lye drain cleaner. All would help for a little while, then it would gradually clog up again. So frustrating, made even more frustrating by my inability to get the drain plug thingy out of the drain. Every other house I've lived in had plugs that came out by twisting to unhook a little piece and then pulling up. That didn't work in my sinks here, so I was left with trying to shove the baking soda through the gap under the plug and into the drain, which needless to say was not optimal.
Finally fed up this weekend, I bought a drain-unclogging kit that came with a bottle of lye compound and a cheap plastic barbed snake. I also emptied everything out from under the sink and got down under there to see what the plumbing actually looked like. I was ready to completely disassemble everything in sight, if necessary, in my pursuit of a free-draining sink.
Before taking the drastic step of removing the U-bend, I decided to try unscrewing the only other movable part I saw: the lever that connects the top-of-sink plunger handle thingy to the pipe and raises and lowers the drain plug thingy.
I am all about the technical terms.
I unscrewed the random connector and pulled out the connecting rod, and voila! That was what was holding the drain plug in! Oh hooray! Now at least I can get the lye directly into the drain!
But wait, when I pulled out the drain plug, a nasty glob of nastiness came up with it. I cleaned that off in my bucket, and used the barbed snake from my kit to extract another very small glob from the pipe. Lo and behold, I can now see all the way down the pipe to the bottom of the U-bend!
I put the plug back in, reattached the piece I unscrewed, and tried the sink. It drained!!! And no need to use the toxic chemicals!
Hallelujah and let the pleasant tooth brushing begin.
So that's more than you ever needed to know about the state of my sink. Be glad I didn't take pictures, because it was gross. The point is that I DID IT. Myself. I figured it out, it only took 10 minutes, only cost $5, and my sink has been draining perfectly for five days.
I am invincible.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Sunday, May 05, 2013
So... let's talk laundry soap.
There are lots of recipes for making your own floating around the web and pinned on Pinterest, and I pinned one myself, intending to try it out. It was one of the "cooked" ones, where you melt grated bar soap and combine it with the other ingredients and water into a liquid laundry soap.
I've been using commercial liquid laundry detergent for the past 18ish years, because that's what Shaun liked and wanted me to buy. (Which makes no sense, since I was always the one doing the laundry...) Before that, in college and grad school when I lived alone, I preferred to buy powdered laundry detergent so I wasn't paying for water in the jug or dealing with a drippy measuring cup. But I digress.
I pinned the recipe, bought the ingredients, and then they sat in the pantry for months because I'm lazy and didn't want to go to all that trouble of cooking up a batch of soap. It seemed to have a high potential for being messy, and plus where the heck am I going to store five gallons of laundry soap?
I finally realized yesterday that I can go back to powdered laundry soap, because the liquid variety is no longer a requirement in my house! The ingredients for the DIY powder are the same as for the DIY liquid. It should work the same, provided it dissolves completely in the washer.
So yesterday, I made a small batch of powdered laundry soap.
Ta Daaaaaa!
Recipes on the web are mostly variations on a theme. Local water chemistry plays a role in how much of each ingredient you need, but in general it's washing soda, borax, and bar soap, sometimes with baking soda added as well. All the ingredients were available in my local grocery store.
The recipe I used was:
3 cups washing soda (sodium carbonate)
3 cups borax (sodium borate)
1.5 cups baking soda (sodium bicarbonate)
1 bar Fels-Naptha laundry soap
I grated the soap with the finest disk of my food processor, but it was still more like long curls than powder, so I took off the grating disk and pulverized it further with the regular blade attachment. My goal was to get it as powdery as possible so it would dissolve faster in the washer (I have a high efficiency (HE) front-loader). Then I mixed everything together in a jar. Done.
This took approximately 10 minutes start to finish. Easy peasy. The small batch I made yesterday yielded about 9 cups of laundry soap, with a total cost of $8.84. Unless the clothes are really dirty each load only requires 1 tablespoon (really!), so that amount will wash 144 loads of laundry, for a cost per load of about $0.06.
For comparison, the All Free and Clear liquid I was buying before cost about $0.19 per load. Mixing up my own is a third of the cost. Significant savings.
I've done six loads of wash with it so far, and I'm convinced. It's cheap, it's quick and easy to make, it's phosphate-free, and it works really well. The only things I may change are to leave out the baking soda since I'm not sure it's really necessary, and to find a bar soap that doesn't have coloring or fragrance. I know I've seen Kirk's unscented castile soap bars here in town, and people have reported good results with that. The Fels-Naptha has a pleasant but strong fragrance, and though it nearly completely dissipates during line-drying, I'd rather have unscented laundry. On the other hand, the Fels-Naptha gets out dirt and grease stains really well. In any case, I'm not going to buy commercial laundry detergent again.
There are lots of recipes for making your own floating around the web and pinned on Pinterest, and I pinned one myself, intending to try it out. It was one of the "cooked" ones, where you melt grated bar soap and combine it with the other ingredients and water into a liquid laundry soap.
I've been using commercial liquid laundry detergent for the past 18ish years, because that's what Shaun liked and wanted me to buy. (Which makes no sense, since I was always the one doing the laundry...) Before that, in college and grad school when I lived alone, I preferred to buy powdered laundry detergent so I wasn't paying for water in the jug or dealing with a drippy measuring cup. But I digress.
I pinned the recipe, bought the ingredients, and then they sat in the pantry for months because I'm lazy and didn't want to go to all that trouble of cooking up a batch of soap. It seemed to have a high potential for being messy, and plus where the heck am I going to store five gallons of laundry soap?
I finally realized yesterday that I can go back to powdered laundry soap, because the liquid variety is no longer a requirement in my house! The ingredients for the DIY powder are the same as for the DIY liquid. It should work the same, provided it dissolves completely in the washer.
So yesterday, I made a small batch of powdered laundry soap.
Ta Daaaaaa!
Recipes on the web are mostly variations on a theme. Local water chemistry plays a role in how much of each ingredient you need, but in general it's washing soda, borax, and bar soap, sometimes with baking soda added as well. All the ingredients were available in my local grocery store.
The recipe I used was:
3 cups washing soda (sodium carbonate)
3 cups borax (sodium borate)
1.5 cups baking soda (sodium bicarbonate)
1 bar Fels-Naptha laundry soap
I grated the soap with the finest disk of my food processor, but it was still more like long curls than powder, so I took off the grating disk and pulverized it further with the regular blade attachment. My goal was to get it as powdery as possible so it would dissolve faster in the washer (I have a high efficiency (HE) front-loader). Then I mixed everything together in a jar. Done.
This took approximately 10 minutes start to finish. Easy peasy. The small batch I made yesterday yielded about 9 cups of laundry soap, with a total cost of $8.84. Unless the clothes are really dirty each load only requires 1 tablespoon (really!), so that amount will wash 144 loads of laundry, for a cost per load of about $0.06.
For comparison, the All Free and Clear liquid I was buying before cost about $0.19 per load. Mixing up my own is a third of the cost. Significant savings.
I've done six loads of wash with it so far, and I'm convinced. It's cheap, it's quick and easy to make, it's phosphate-free, and it works really well. The only things I may change are to leave out the baking soda since I'm not sure it's really necessary, and to find a bar soap that doesn't have coloring or fragrance. I know I've seen Kirk's unscented castile soap bars here in town, and people have reported good results with that. The Fels-Naptha has a pleasant but strong fragrance, and though it nearly completely dissipates during line-drying, I'd rather have unscented laundry. On the other hand, the Fels-Naptha gets out dirt and grease stains really well. In any case, I'm not going to buy commercial laundry detergent again.
Saturday, May 04, 2013
I've spent the past couple evenings immersed in the Birds-of-Paradise Project website, from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
AMAZING.
Two scientists, Ed Scholes, an evolutionary biologist, and Tim Laman, a biologist/photographer, spent eight years finding, studying, and photographing all 39 species of birds-of-paradise in New Guinea, Australia, and the nearby islands.
The website has a series of videos that illustrate various aspects of the appearance, behavior, and evolution of these birds, as well as the field effort that this project required. It was fascinating.
I am so glad that there are people in this wide world of ours that are going to these places and filming these things so I can watch and learn. I will probably never get to see these birds in the wild (but never say never!), so to even see them on video is fantastic.
The videos don't show every species in-depth, but there are photos of each and incredible footage of many. There's a lot of information on the site, but it's well worth the time it takes to explore everything.
I originally just pinned this website on Pinterest, but enjoyed it so much that I had to rave about it more! Go! Be amazed!
-------------------
Note: All pictures in this post are snipped from the Birds-of-Paradise Project website, and are copyrighted and owned/licensed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The images are posted here as an educational teaser to get people to go to the website for themselves!
-------------------
Edited to add: If you want to see more, there's a PBS Nature episode about birds of paradise, called Birds of the Gods. The blue bird-of-paradise (shown above in the first picture of this post) has been my all-time favorite bird-of-paradise ever since I saw it on some other PBS program ages ago. Birds of the Gods is also available to watch instantly on Netflix, if you have that service.
AMAZING.
Two scientists, Ed Scholes, an evolutionary biologist, and Tim Laman, a biologist/photographer, spent eight years finding, studying, and photographing all 39 species of birds-of-paradise in New Guinea, Australia, and the nearby islands.
The website has a series of videos that illustrate various aspects of the appearance, behavior, and evolution of these birds, as well as the field effort that this project required. It was fascinating.
I am so glad that there are people in this wide world of ours that are going to these places and filming these things so I can watch and learn. I will probably never get to see these birds in the wild (but never say never!), so to even see them on video is fantastic.
The videos don't show every species in-depth, but there are photos of each and incredible footage of many. There's a lot of information on the site, but it's well worth the time it takes to explore everything.
I originally just pinned this website on Pinterest, but enjoyed it so much that I had to rave about it more! Go! Be amazed!
-------------------
Note: All pictures in this post are snipped from the Birds-of-Paradise Project website, and are copyrighted and owned/licensed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The images are posted here as an educational teaser to get people to go to the website for themselves!
-------------------
Edited to add: If you want to see more, there's a PBS Nature episode about birds of paradise, called Birds of the Gods. The blue bird-of-paradise (shown above in the first picture of this post) has been my all-time favorite bird-of-paradise ever since I saw it on some other PBS program ages ago. Birds of the Gods is also available to watch instantly on Netflix, if you have that service.
Thursday, May 02, 2013
I'm working on a Biological Assessment for endangered and threatened fish for an irrigation canal project, and I keep typing "bull trouty" instead of "bull trout."
It's just so funny, thinking about the cute widdle trouty fishies, swimming in the Hood River. I've typed this accidentally about ten times so far, and every time it makes me giggle.
It's the little things.
It's just so funny, thinking about the cute widdle trouty fishies, swimming in the Hood River. I've typed this accidentally about ten times so far, and every time it makes me giggle.
It's the little things.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
I traded my not-smart phone for an iPhone last December when my contract was up for renewal, and I just discovered the coolest thing. If I take a picture on my phone, it automatically uploads straight to my computer!
Sigh, I know. I am clearly not worthy of an iPhone. I can't believe it took me four months to figure this out. This has to have something to do with {{The Cloud}}. A subfolder called "My Photo Stream" mysteriously appeared in the "My Pictures" folder on my computer, containing all my phone pictures. I didn't create this folder or change any settings on the computer, so it must have been something that {{The Cloud}} did automatically. If it was something I did, I didn't do it knowingly...maybe it happened when I plugged the phone in to transfer music from iTunes.
I envision {{The Cloud}} as a giant swirling nebulosity of sparkly purple mist, containing the sum of human knowledge somewhere in a huge server farm building in California. It must be sentient, to know that I wanted my photos on my computer and my email and Kindle books on my phone.
I do not understand {{The Cloud}}. I think it's smarter than me.
But I like not having to go fetch the cable to transfer pictures off my phone.
Sigh, I know. I am clearly not worthy of an iPhone. I can't believe it took me four months to figure this out. This has to have something to do with {{The Cloud}}. A subfolder called "My Photo Stream" mysteriously appeared in the "My Pictures" folder on my computer, containing all my phone pictures. I didn't create this folder or change any settings on the computer, so it must have been something that {{The Cloud}} did automatically. If it was something I did, I didn't do it knowingly...maybe it happened when I plugged the phone in to transfer music from iTunes.
I envision {{The Cloud}} as a giant swirling nebulosity of sparkly purple mist, containing the sum of human knowledge somewhere in a huge server farm building in California. It must be sentient, to know that I wanted my photos on my computer and my email and Kindle books on my phone.
I do not understand {{The Cloud}}. I think it's smarter than me.
But I like not having to go fetch the cable to transfer pictures off my phone.
Monday, April 15, 2013
It was a sad weekend, because I had to say goodbye to my sweet kitty Naia (pronounced Nye-uh) on Friday.
2009
Naia came into my life on August 3, 1998 as a teeny tiny kitten. I found him by the side of the road when I was out on a work trip for the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, doing freshwater mussel surveys on the creeks of central North Carolina. He came bounding out of the weeds by the bridge where we were unloading the canoes, and immediately attached himself to my heart. His first ten hours with me were spent in a canoe, mostly sleeping on my sweatshirt, and he shared my can of tuna fish for lunch.
October 1998
He was very young, only about five weeks old according to the vet, and was probably dumped at the bridge as an unwanted kitten. His eyes hadn't even changed color yet, and he was so tiny he fit in my cupped hands. I named him Naia after the freshwater mussels that were the reason for the canoe trip, which are sometimes called naiads (harkening back to Greek mythology).
October 1998
He was a mischievous kitten, and loved to climb the screen door, hunt moths that got inside, and chase ankles and string. He made me laugh all the time, and at night he would curl up next to my chin and try to "nurse" my neck. He was too young to leave his momma, and imprinted on me.
January 1999
He integrated well with our dog Cobalt, and when Emma came along, he accepted her into the family as well. When I was pregnant, he used to curl around my Emma-belly and purr, then stare indignantly at my belly when she kicked him.
Emma as a toddler was sometimes a trial. On Thanksgiving in 2005, I remember two-year-old Emma chasing him down the hall screeching "Stop running! Stop running!" because she so desperately wanted to hug him and love him and play with him. The bathroom was a good refuge.
January 2005
When Coco adopted herself into our family in 2009, Naia was 11, getting elderly and creaky. Having a young cat in the house rejuvenated him, and he started playing again. Plus, Coco was usually up for a snuggle when I wasn't available to offer my lap.
Coco, in turn, seemed to appreciate that Naia sometimes needed some help. In the last year or so, Naia couldn't always reach all the corners during his baths, or would get tired halfway through. Coco stepped up and helped him out.
He seemed to be able to tell when I wasn't happy and needed a cuddle. He would crawl up into my lap or onto my shoulder, and purr and purr and purr.
If he was feeling especially cuddly, he would head-butt my cheek then tuck his head under my chin. There really is nothing like that feeling. It was unconditional.
Last Friday, I took him in to the vet because his breathing was very labored. I was not expecting them to find a huge tumor in his abdomen and large quantities of blood in the pleural cavity around his lungs. There was no hope of recovery, and I had to make the choice to let him go. It was awful but peaceful and quick, and I was glad that he wasn't in distress any more.
April 12, 2013
For almost 15 years, Naia was my always faithful, ever comforting buddy. Rest in peace, Naia-bo-baia.
2009
Naia came into my life on August 3, 1998 as a teeny tiny kitten. I found him by the side of the road when I was out on a work trip for the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, doing freshwater mussel surveys on the creeks of central North Carolina. He came bounding out of the weeds by the bridge where we were unloading the canoes, and immediately attached himself to my heart. His first ten hours with me were spent in a canoe, mostly sleeping on my sweatshirt, and he shared my can of tuna fish for lunch.
October 1998
He was very young, only about five weeks old according to the vet, and was probably dumped at the bridge as an unwanted kitten. His eyes hadn't even changed color yet, and he was so tiny he fit in my cupped hands. I named him Naia after the freshwater mussels that were the reason for the canoe trip, which are sometimes called naiads (harkening back to Greek mythology).
October 1998
He was a mischievous kitten, and loved to climb the screen door, hunt moths that got inside, and chase ankles and string. He made me laugh all the time, and at night he would curl up next to my chin and try to "nurse" my neck. He was too young to leave his momma, and imprinted on me.
January 1999
He integrated well with our dog Cobalt, and when Emma came along, he accepted her into the family as well. When I was pregnant, he used to curl around my Emma-belly and purr, then stare indignantly at my belly when she kicked him.
Emma as a toddler was sometimes a trial. On Thanksgiving in 2005, I remember two-year-old Emma chasing him down the hall screeching "Stop running! Stop running!" because she so desperately wanted to hug him and love him and play with him. The bathroom was a good refuge.
January 2005
When Coco adopted herself into our family in 2009, Naia was 11, getting elderly and creaky. Having a young cat in the house rejuvenated him, and he started playing again. Plus, Coco was usually up for a snuggle when I wasn't available to offer my lap.
Coco, in turn, seemed to appreciate that Naia sometimes needed some help. In the last year or so, Naia couldn't always reach all the corners during his baths, or would get tired halfway through. Coco stepped up and helped him out.
He seemed to be able to tell when I wasn't happy and needed a cuddle. He would crawl up into my lap or onto my shoulder, and purr and purr and purr.
If he was feeling especially cuddly, he would head-butt my cheek then tuck his head under my chin. There really is nothing like that feeling. It was unconditional.
Last Friday, I took him in to the vet because his breathing was very labored. I was not expecting them to find a huge tumor in his abdomen and large quantities of blood in the pleural cavity around his lungs. There was no hope of recovery, and I had to make the choice to let him go. It was awful but peaceful and quick, and I was glad that he wasn't in distress any more.
April 12, 2013
For almost 15 years, Naia was my always faithful, ever comforting buddy. Rest in peace, Naia-bo-baia.
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